I had read somewhere that Orange Blossom makes a terrific mead so went ahead and bought a gallon (12 lbs) of that along with 2.5 lbs of wildflower honey which I thought I would mix in just to give it a little more character. The general rule of thumb is the more honey you use the sweeter the final product will be with a dry mead being less than 12 lbs of honey, an in-between mead being between 12-15 lbs and a sweet mead being over 15 lbs of honey (or so I was led to believe). The recipe and procedure is pretty straightforward which I essentially followed from the book "The Compleat Meadmaker" by Ken Schramm.
Ingredients
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12 lbs raw Orange Blossom Honey
2.5 lbs raw Wildflower Honey
2 packets D-47 Lalvin dry yeast
3 tsp yeast nutrient/energizer
4 gallons purified water
Brewed on 7/4/2012
Schedule
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~ Boil 1 gallon of the water for 10 minutes, store the remainder in the fridge or freezer to get cold
~ Reconstitue the dry yeast. Mix the yeast into several ounces of purified water in a clean bowl and let stand
~ Remove from heat, mix in the honey and stir constantly
~ After mixing the "must" was at 155F. I turned the heat on briefly to hit 160 and let sit 10 minutes
~ Added the 3 gallons of cold purified water to my glass carboy, then transferred the warm sanitized must in afterwards, temp after mixing was 75 degrees, perfect
~ Added yeast, gave 60 seconds of pure O2, added an airlock and left to ferment
At this point I did also measure the OG and was shocked to see it come in at a whopping 1.152! Wow, I would have used less honey had I known it would go so far. This will probably end up being either a very sweet mead or very alcoholic or most likely, both. Updates to come later.
8/1/2012 - The mead has been slowly fermenting for almost a month now so I figured it was time rack into the secondary. Gravity is down to 1.048 which means the ABV is approx 14%. The flavor is still very sweet and young with the honey taste dominating but it has the first hints of complexities that I hope further develop. I am now resigned to let this sit for probably another 4 months or so before I begin to consider taking another sample or bottling. See you in December, first mead of mine.
9/9/2012 - A bit of yeast cake was starting to form again in the secondary so I racked again and also took a gravity reading. 1.040 which means the ABV is now approx 15%. I think its going to level off here, the fermentation has dipped to just about nil. The taste has matured a bit. A little less sweet and with a pleasant honey-like finish. I think next time I will use less honey (maybe 10 lbs) to produce a dryer mead but otherwise I am please with the progress.
1/7/2013 - Racked and bottled into 375ml bottles with cap/corks. Hopefully I left it long enough to collect all the sediment that's going to form. And finally the mead finally tastes "ready." The sweetness has mellowed a bit so its no longer reminiscent of cough syrup. Its got a pleasant honey-like aroma and smooth clean finish. It's definitely a sweet mead though, and if I were going to do it again I would use less honey to produce a dryer result, just for comparison, as it stands though this tastes pretty good and I'll be interested to see how continues to age.
2/24/2013 - The mead still tastes alright but I've been having issues with the mead continue to give off gas. It's popped a few corks and I think if I had capped it things might have ended up even worse. I think next time I'll either leave in a fermentor for longer (a year??) or use some kind of yeast arrester, or maybe I just won't make it again.
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